Mostyn want to change the feeling of their gallery and make people feel more comfortable. For example, in galleries there’s usually there is a member of staff staring at you, and it makes you feel awkward as if they’re judging like they think you’re going to break or steal something. Mostyn is a small gallery so the feeling is amplified.

Mostyn looks traditional from the outside and blends in with the other buildings which can be a problem. Inside, it’s quite different.

Mostyn is the leading contemporary art gallery in Wales it is situated in Llandudno. They get a lot of tourists and elderly people and some aren’t prepared to try and read into the more contemporary, conceptual things, they take it at face value. At Mostyn they want to change the way people engage with the work and start a dialogue.

Some of the elderly folk aren’t prepared to look at more conceptual things

They did a recent exhibition called Dear Portrait, it aimed to try and explore new ways of portraiture, the person being portrayed was invited to respond with text and that response was shown besides the piece of work. One piece was a box, this box meant a lot to the artist’s family it was carried around for years, and they used it for many things, so the box was like a family portrait.

Another was a photograph accompanied by a set of headphones, the photograph is of Guitarist from the band Sonic Youth, he was invited to go to a recording studio and bring his guitar, then they told him to think of his favourite in his head, then they recorded white noise while he was thinking of it.

Another exhibition by Italian artist Franco Kippari, he got permission from the Italian government to commission all of the photo booths across Italy for free. So anyone can go into a booth take a strip of photographs and send them to him. So its lots of pictures of unknown people that we probably will not see again.

Mostyn was opened 1901 by Lady Augustin Mostyn, it was the first gallery in the world to exhibit works exclusively by female artists, at the time women were not allowed to exhibit alongside male artists. As part of a historical series called women’s arts society they invited female artists from all over the world to submit work responding to this idea.

They usually have two exhibitions going on at the same time.

They’ve got one exhibition by photographer, Tom Wood coming up it will be the first gallery to show his landscapes.

He recommends we watch a series on BBC 4 called ‘What artists do all day’

They’ve also got an exhibition called ‘Return Journey’ there is a photograph of a painting by Patrick Herring and next to it the artist Simon Fajua wrote a script of his thoughts when he first saw it. On the reverse of that is a TV which shows his play.

Another piece for the Return Journey exhibition was a 50ft canvas by Jessica Warboys, she returned to the stormy seas of Newport where she was born, and made a painting shaped by the sea; ‘For her sea paintings, Jessica submerges large canvases in the sea after applying pigments to the inner-folded surface, obtaining the traces of movements and forms: wind, waves, sand and folds.’ (http://www.initiartmagazine.com/interview.php?IVarchive=47)

He runs a national project called Circuit, it’s for 15-25 year olds. Mostyn are the only Welsh gallery to run the Circuit programme, alongside Tate who are leading the programme and Nottingham contemporary, Wising and Kettlesyard and Whitworth Arts centre.

The programme is made up of four strands, the programme will includes:

Young people’s arts festival in North Wales; each of the galleries have a pot of money for their young person’s group to organise and run an arts festival.

Peer-led programme for young people; Young people decide what they do, not others. It’s for us to decide what’s relevant to our lives

Sustained work with local youth organisations; They aim to set up 2 sustainable partnerships with youth organisations each year (beyond 4 years of funding) At the moment they are working with Wrexham Maelor and Action for Children.

Online and digital engagement; Reaching wider audiences, through digital means, encourage young people to create work on digital platforms, e.g. internet, cameras, video, phones, animations projections, radio stations.

Their 5 year strategy, they are looking at how the sustainable partnerships which they are setting up can co fund something in the future.

Monitoring and Evaluation

They need to measure the impact that this project is having on young people and galleries to justify the 5 million. They have set up a young evaluators group

Action research –

Critical friend – A person who is setting up a young evaluators group, working with young people from all of the galleries to develop their skills, so the young people evaluate it too

Audience profiling- four times a year they are profiling the audience they have in the gallery, showing how the audience changes over time, hopefully more young people turn up.

Audience development- Been to groups of young people to ask what interests them whether they like going to galleries, etc.

At the moment they are responding to the same brief as the artists in the ‘Return Home’ exhibition.

LlAWN 01 (Llandudno arts weekend) was the first arts festival in Llandudno. For Llawn 02 their group of young people are working with the project manager of Llawn to help set up the festival and plan their own activities.

They also got Mostyn to agree to give the young people a gallery space to curate an exhibition, it takes a lot of planning; some artworks have to be planned 2 years in advance.

The funding is aimed at engaging harder to reach young people, which is a very broad term, as anyone who isn’t engaging in art is ‘hard to reach’. Whether they can’t physically get to galleries, lack money, had negative associations with galleries or whatever reason. They want to create a welcoming environment for young people. They will run more specific projects as time runs on, they are looking at working with people in alternative education and young carers.

He has always loved the outdoors and art, so he enrolled an outdoors study course, and when he finished his degree he did a foundation art course. He then wanted to be an outdoor instructor, he found out about development training, the idea that the outdoors can be a catalyst for change or personal development. This was poignant to him as it was a process he had been through; he was naughty when he was young and was lucky to not end up in prison before he got into the outdoors. He worked in a youth club and at 21 was offered a job to design a project for young people aged 16-25, which was good preparation for what he does now. Through working in youth projects he realised that art can also be a catalyst for change, and became self-employed, to deliver freelance workshops for arts organisations for young people. He often uses art as a diversionary tactic, a distraction when having personal conversations with people, it relaxes people and breaks down barriers.